CHINA has launched a comprehensive feasibility study and pre-project assessment for a space-based intelligent computing constellation, a senior official from the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense has said. Yu Guobin, deputy director of the administration’s commercial space department, revealed that the administration has taken the lead in organizing the project’s kick-off meeting and expert panel sessions. The work is proceeding in an orderly manner. Space-based computing refers to the deployment of computational capacity in space, enabling seamless global coverage through satellite networking. Compared with terrestrial data centers, its greatest advantages lie in real-time responsiveness and global coverage. Yu underscored the strategic necessity of developing space-based computing, noting that it is a key means to break through bottlenecks in ground computing and ensure the sustainable growth of the digital economy. Traditional data centers are constrained by high energy consumption, limited land resources, high cooling costs, and limited coverage, which can hardly meet future demands for ultra-large-scale, green, and globally covered computing power, while space-based computing offers a zero-carbon, sustainable, and widely accessible alternative, said Yu. In addition, in the traditional model, satellites collect massive amounts of data from space, but have very limited onboard computing power. All raw data must be transmitted back to ground stations for processing and analysis. Xie Lina, deputy director of the data center department at the Cloud Computing and Big Data Research Institute under the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, explained that computing satellites can form laser communication links to achieve seamless global coverage and process data directly on orbit. This reduces the data latency for scenarios such as disaster early warning and resource monitoring from hours to seconds, which is unattainable by ground-based computing, said Xie. (Xinhua) | 